The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is the interconnection of various embedded devices. Such devices (called “things”) may or may not have user-accessible input/output capability. For example, a thing may be an embedded sensor inside of a product such as a refrigerator or washing machine. Such a thing may not have a mouse, keyboard, display or any other type of user-accessible device by which a person can digitally interact with the thing.
For a device to connect to other devices over the Internet, the device generally needs to be provisioned. Provisioning a device includes programming the device to specify how it is to communicate over the Internet and possibly specifying what sort of data is to have access to, what services the device can access, etc.
Provisioning a thing in the context of the IoT may be problematic because of the large number of things on the IoT and because the thing may lack a human-accessible input/output capability.